A paper feeder which feeds paper into the platen of a printer, can have more than one bin and a mechanism for selecting which of the bins from which to feed out a sheet of paper or envelope. The paper feeder can be driven by the platen of the printer, and a particular bin can be selected by reversing the direction of rotation of the platen a plurality of times, with the particular angle at which at least one of the reversals occurs determining which of the bins is selected. U.S. Pat. No. 4,248,415 by Steinhilber describes a selector mechanism associated with each paper bin for making such selection. However, the particular mechanism in each selector is relatively delicate. A selector mechanism of greater ruggedness, for the selection of shafts to be rotated by control of the angle of reversals of rotation of the selector mechanism, would be useful in paper feeders and other mechanisms.